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The inmost self is beyond the kind of experience which says 'I want,' 'I love,' 'I know,' 'I feel.' It has its own way of knowing, loving and experiencing which is a divine way and not a human one, a way of identity, of union, of 'espousal,' in which there is no longer a separate psychological individuality drawing all good and truth toward itself, and thus loving and knowing for itself. Lover and Beloved are 'one spirit.'"
- Thomas Merton [20th C.], New Seeds of Contemplation
(Let the Spirit take you to this inner place of rest and union with God.)
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PHIL 2:5-11; PS 22:26B-27, 28-30AB, 30E, 31-32
LK 14:15-24
One of those at table with Jesus said to him,
“Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.”
He replied to him,
“A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many.
When the time for the dinner came,
he dispatched his servant to say to those invited,
‘Come, everything is now ready.’
But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves.
The first said to him,
‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen
and am on my way to evaluate them;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have just married a woman,
and therefore I cannot come.’
The servant went and reported this to his master.
Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant,
‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town
and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out
and still there is room.’
The master then ordered the servant,
‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows
and make people come in that my home may be filled.
For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”
USCCB Lectionary
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Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain,
2018 (3rd ed.)
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Luke 14: 15-24 (Good excuses for the damned)
God created because God is love, and love seeks to share its joy with others. God chose a people and attempted to prepare them to appreciate the gifts they would receive—especially the gift of the Son— but they were too busy with their own agenda. Therefore, Jesus tells us in today’s reading, the invitation shall now be extended to anyone who wants to share the Lord’s joy.
• “Life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans,” Ann Landers wrote. What do you think she meant by this?
• What are some of the excuses you use to keep yourself distanced from the needs of others? How many of these are legitimate?
Paperback, Kindle and eBook
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Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
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BOOK II: THE HISTORY OF THE GENERATION AND HEAVENLY BIRTH OF DIVINE LOVE
Chapter 2: That in God there is but one act, which is his own divinity
God spoke but one word, and in virtue of that in a moment were made the sun, moon and that innumerable multitude of stars, with their differences in brightness, motion and influence. He spoke and they were made. A single word of God's filled the air with birds, and the sea with fishes, made spring from the earth all the plants and all the beasts we see.
For although the sacred historian, accommodating himself to our fashion of understanding, recounts that God often repeated that omnipotent word: Let there be: according to the days of the world's creation, nevertheless, properly speaking, this word was singularly one; so that David terms it a breathing or spirit of the divine mouth; that is, one single act of his infinite will, which so powerfully spreads its virtue over the variety of created things, that it makes us conceive this act as
if it were multiplied and diversified into as many differences as there are in these effects, though in reality it is most simply and singularly one. Thus S. Chrysostom remarks that what Moses said in many words describing the creation of the world, the glorious S. John expressed in a single word, saying that by the word, that is by that eternal word who is the Son of God, all things were made.
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